The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)

The December 2015 passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a reauthorization of the primary k-12 federal education law in the U.S., provides states with significant policymaking opportunity and responsibility and creates new levers for advancing equity and excellence throughout the nation’s schools.

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Rethinking Accountability for Continuous Improvement

One of ESSA’s most significant features is its requirement that states employ a multiple-measures system of accountability. Rather than focusing accountability systems primarily on test scores, these systems must also include other academic indicators, as well as one or more indicators of “school quality or student success.” Use of these additional indicators provides an opportunity for states to build a more holistic accountability system that includes high-leverage non-academic measures of performance, covering such areas as school climate, chronic absenteeism, suspension/expulsion rates, and college and career readiness. The use of a variety of educational opportunity and outcome indicators, with data on overall and student subgroup performance, also equips states with the information needed to identify the most appropriate evidence-based strategies and interventions to support continuous improvement across all schools.

Equity and ESSA

ESSA includes several new provisions that states can leverage to expand access to deeper learning for all students, as well as to ensure that schools and students benefit from the resources and practices they need to create safe and supportive school environments where students and staff thrive. These include:

Assessments: ESSA requires states to implement assessments that measure “higher-order thinking skills and understanding,” explicitly allowing the use of “portfolios, projects, or extended-performance tasks” and computer-based adaptive assessments, as part of state systems. Performance assessments are critically important in advancing high-quality learning. Under ESSA’s predecessor, the No Child Left Behind Act, performance assessments were often not prioritized, particularly in schools with high populations of underserved students.

Teacher quality: ESSA requires states to have a plan for ensuring that all students are taught by effective, experienced, and in-field teachers. States must monitor and address disparities in access to inexperienced, out-of-field, or ineffective teachers among students of color and students from low-income households and may also track and address disparities in access for students with disabilities, English learners, and other student populations, such as rural students.

Resource equity and transparency: ESSA goes even further than its predecessor in ensuring transparency in resource allocation. Among the mechanisms being used: states and districts must now report the per-pupil expenditures of federal, state, and local funds for each school and district, disaggregated by funding source, and local education agencies’ improvement plans must identify resource inequities. States are also expected to audit resource equity and adequacy for schools identified for assistance and to invest in them if there are shortfalls or inequalities. ESSA upholds the long-standing principle that federal aid to k-12 education should add to, not substitute for, state and local education funding. For the first time, ESSA also incentivizes districts to consider more equitable approaches to funding.

Stakeholder Engagement

As states transition to this new law, communities and stakeholders will play an important role in ensuring that states, districts, and schools leverage the new opportunities under ESSA to provide high-quality educational opportunities that prepare students equitably for the 21st century. To this end, the law requires stakeholder outreach and engagement during both the development and the implementation of state plans.

““It’s time to focus on how states and localities can make powerful learning a reality for each and every child.””

As the US looks for ways to reduce school shootings, research shows that initiatives that reduce suspension, expulsion, and intervention from law enforcement and that focus on inclusion and social emotional learning show promise that arming teachers and expelling students do not.

In this re-posting of a Q&A first published as part of the Hunt Institute’s blog, The Intersection, LPI President Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond describes the opportunity ESSA presents to advance educational equity in our nation’s schools and offers examples of how states are capitalizing on ESSA requirements to address longstanding disparities and better support marginalized youth.

At this July 18 briefing, panelists shared findings from the report Encouraging Social and Emotional Learning in the Context of New Accountability. Speakers discussed opportunities states and districts have under the Every Student Succeeds Act to broaden their definitions of student success to include students’ social and emotional learning (SEL).

In addition to providing students and families with much-needed services and supports, well-implemented community schools can be a successful strategy for whole-school transformation. That's the finding of a recently released brief, Community Schools: An Evidence-Based Strategy for Equitable School Improvement, published jointly by the Learning Policy Institute and the National Education Policy Center. This LPI Blog post features a Q&A with the study authors, who detail their approach and findings, describe the four interdependent features of community schools, and discuss how well-implemented community schools can be used as a targeted and comprehensive intervention for school improvement under ESSA.

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states are using a new approach to accountability based on multiple indicators of educational opportunity and performance and can decide how to use these measures to identify schools for intervention and support and to encourage systems of continuous improvement. The decision rule approach can encourage greater attention to each of the measures, offer more transparency about how school performance factors into identification, and support more strategic interventions than those informed only by a single rating, ranking, or grade. This brief describes five options for using decision rules that are designed to meet ESSA’s requirements and support states' use of systems that encourage continuous improvement across all schools.

Principals are essential to improving student achievement and narrowing persistent achievement gaps. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides opportunities for states to use federal funds to invest in developing and supporting effective school leaders, such as supporting their recruitment, preparation, and training using the optional state set-aside under Title II. This brief summarizes the evidence about the importance of principals, describes research-based practices in leadership development, and outlines promising, evidence-based investments from submitted and draft ESSA state plans.

Community schools, which feature integrated student supports, expanded learning time, family and community engagement, and collaborative leadership, can be a successful strategy for improving schools under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). That’s the conclusion of this research review, based on an analysis of over 100 studies. This brief, published jointly by the Learning Policy Institute and the National Education Policy Center, discusses the four key features of community schools and offers guidance to support school, district, and state leaders as they consider or implement a community school intervention strategy in schools targeted for comprehensive support.

The Every Student Succeeds Act provides an important opportunity for states to broaden the definition of student success to include measures of students’ social-emotional, as well as academic, development. This brief describes how states might measure and promote social and emotional learning (SEL) in their accountability and continuous improvement plans.

How can schools be encouraged to help students develop socially and emotionally and to foster positive school environments in the context of new accountability under the Every Student Succeeds Act? This report provides a framework for considering how measures of social and emotional learning (SEL) and school climate may be incorporated into an accountability and continuous improvement system.

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), state assessment systems must be designed to measure higher-order thinking skills and understanding. This report, published in partnership with the Council of Chief State Schools Officers (CCSSO), details how states can use performance assessments—including portfolios, projects, and extended-performance tasks—to assess what students know and are able to do.

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The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) represents an opportunity for states, districts, and schools to equitably design education systems to ensure that historically underserved students are prepared for the demands of the 21st century. This report details the equity implications of ESSA and provides recommendations for ways in which states, districts, and schools can leverage the new law to enhance equitable educational opportunities and close persistent achievement gaps.

How can schools be encouraged to help students develop socially and emotionally and to foster positive school environments in the context of new accountability under the Every Student Succeeds Act? This report provides a framework for considering how measures of social and emotional learning (SEL) and school climate may be incorporated into an accountability and continuous improvement system.

Strategic selection and use of performance indicators can illuminate disparities in our schools and focus attention and resources on rectifying long-standing inequities. This report explores how states can use a multiple-measure accountability system to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for underserved youth and begin to dismantle the school-to-prison-pipeline.

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